Post by Swarm on Jun 16, 2022 7:37:39 GMT -5
Mission Statement
June 16th, 2022
Well folks it is just about that time for things to get moving and from there I imagine these next three months are gonna fly right by! I can't stress enough how grateful I am that you all have backed this revival. This has been and will continue to be a team effort through and through. Having said that, I want to talk about something that has been on my mind for a while.
Promo RPing is a medium that has changed so much since I started RPing back in December of 2001. Back then, the model was very much "person comes to ring and cuts wrestling promo". Over time, people like Frost, Lenore, Destroyer, The Shape, and others pushed the form forward by incorporating different types of settings and developing more outside-the-box characters. It was still mostly monologues but now they were character driven, more shakespeare than Monday Night Raw.
Fast forward several years later and you begin to see folks like Kyzer, EBR, Veronica, and more start to incorporate the day-to-day lives of their characters into their work. This took the model forward to a point where it became the norm for characters to have parallel storylines; One taking place in their RPs, one taking place on the shows themselves. The best at this integrated these stories in a way that was cohesive, the others, not so much. But it was an evolution nonetheless.
Since then, the model itself has remained somewhat static at this stage. To this day, the standard model has become "scene, monologue, scene, monologue" with a pretty general Kyzerian formatting. There's nothing wrong with this approach and there have been many RPs written that were great that adhered to it. With that said, as I began to get a sense of the lay of the land last year in preparation for my return to RPing, I observed a distressing trend.
I saw how RPers who reached for approaches that were more abstract and less traditional were discouraged from doing so. It seems to many, the aforementioned latest model of this medium is the "correct" way and anything outside of that is, thus, incorrect. That mentality will no longer pervade this e-fed. I think we have a really talented group of writers each with their own distinct background, experience, and writing voice and I think it's time for the model to evolve once again to allow for those individuals to have the freedom to maximize their specific gifts.
I am not a prescriptivist when it comes to form. I don't believe there is a correct or incorrect form there are simply more and less effective ways to tell this story, make that point, and/or evoke this feeling. That could be through linear storytelling, through monologue, or through more abstract forms. I point to MESH's RP for SuperBrawl as an example the latter. That was an excellent example of a roleplay that was engaging, compelling, and only MESH could have written. What can we all accomplish as writers if we are as bold as to reach for our own versions of that?
Having said that, I do have one guide post that I want you all to keep in mind and that is to think and write thematically. This is very important because this will be one of the main metrics in which I will be judging matches and likewise will be asking judges to judge matches by as well. I understand people have characters with ongoing plots in their writing but if what you deliver is a roleplay that is scene/monologue/scene/monologue without any sort of broader, overall theme to the work while someone else writes something that may be simpler in form but makes a point, establishes a theme... like... quality over quantity is going to win out there. That doesn't mean don't have stories that play out across your RPs, what it means is treat each RP as a singular piece of work that is designed to evoke SOMETHING. A thought, a feeling, an impression, a sense of things, whatever. I think a great example of this is EBR's work circa 2009-2011 where despite not always doing monologues, through his use of themes, metaphor, and symbolism you came away from each RP with an understanding of this character's frame of mind as if he had sat there and told it to you. Alas, sometimes its the things your character DOESN'T say that speaks the loudest.
I am excited for this next step in the WFWF and I am excited to see what you guys write. As I said before, this approach is only possible because we really do have some awesome writers in this e-fed. Looking around at other spots, it's wild how so many other e-feds are still stuck in 2003 in terms of form. That doesn't mean there's anything wrong with that and I'm sure they're having fun but we have all built something kind of special here. Most e-feds do not have characters with this level of depth. Most e-feds do not have writers who write to the level so many of you do. That's not a knock on them, that's a compliment to ya'll. We've built something cool here, so let's take advantage of that.
June 16th, 2022
Well folks it is just about that time for things to get moving and from there I imagine these next three months are gonna fly right by! I can't stress enough how grateful I am that you all have backed this revival. This has been and will continue to be a team effort through and through. Having said that, I want to talk about something that has been on my mind for a while.
Promo RPing is a medium that has changed so much since I started RPing back in December of 2001. Back then, the model was very much "person comes to ring and cuts wrestling promo". Over time, people like Frost, Lenore, Destroyer, The Shape, and others pushed the form forward by incorporating different types of settings and developing more outside-the-box characters. It was still mostly monologues but now they were character driven, more shakespeare than Monday Night Raw.
Fast forward several years later and you begin to see folks like Kyzer, EBR, Veronica, and more start to incorporate the day-to-day lives of their characters into their work. This took the model forward to a point where it became the norm for characters to have parallel storylines; One taking place in their RPs, one taking place on the shows themselves. The best at this integrated these stories in a way that was cohesive, the others, not so much. But it was an evolution nonetheless.
Since then, the model itself has remained somewhat static at this stage. To this day, the standard model has become "scene, monologue, scene, monologue" with a pretty general Kyzerian formatting. There's nothing wrong with this approach and there have been many RPs written that were great that adhered to it. With that said, as I began to get a sense of the lay of the land last year in preparation for my return to RPing, I observed a distressing trend.
I saw how RPers who reached for approaches that were more abstract and less traditional were discouraged from doing so. It seems to many, the aforementioned latest model of this medium is the "correct" way and anything outside of that is, thus, incorrect. That mentality will no longer pervade this e-fed. I think we have a really talented group of writers each with their own distinct background, experience, and writing voice and I think it's time for the model to evolve once again to allow for those individuals to have the freedom to maximize their specific gifts.
I am not a prescriptivist when it comes to form. I don't believe there is a correct or incorrect form there are simply more and less effective ways to tell this story, make that point, and/or evoke this feeling. That could be through linear storytelling, through monologue, or through more abstract forms. I point to MESH's RP for SuperBrawl as an example the latter. That was an excellent example of a roleplay that was engaging, compelling, and only MESH could have written. What can we all accomplish as writers if we are as bold as to reach for our own versions of that?
Having said that, I do have one guide post that I want you all to keep in mind and that is to think and write thematically. This is very important because this will be one of the main metrics in which I will be judging matches and likewise will be asking judges to judge matches by as well. I understand people have characters with ongoing plots in their writing but if what you deliver is a roleplay that is scene/monologue/scene/monologue without any sort of broader, overall theme to the work while someone else writes something that may be simpler in form but makes a point, establishes a theme... like... quality over quantity is going to win out there. That doesn't mean don't have stories that play out across your RPs, what it means is treat each RP as a singular piece of work that is designed to evoke SOMETHING. A thought, a feeling, an impression, a sense of things, whatever. I think a great example of this is EBR's work circa 2009-2011 where despite not always doing monologues, through his use of themes, metaphor, and symbolism you came away from each RP with an understanding of this character's frame of mind as if he had sat there and told it to you. Alas, sometimes its the things your character DOESN'T say that speaks the loudest.
I am excited for this next step in the WFWF and I am excited to see what you guys write. As I said before, this approach is only possible because we really do have some awesome writers in this e-fed. Looking around at other spots, it's wild how so many other e-feds are still stuck in 2003 in terms of form. That doesn't mean there's anything wrong with that and I'm sure they're having fun but we have all built something kind of special here. Most e-feds do not have characters with this level of depth. Most e-feds do not have writers who write to the level so many of you do. That's not a knock on them, that's a compliment to ya'll. We've built something cool here, so let's take advantage of that.
I dont know good luck 
